Heart Of Darkness
by servalan-ch
Summary: Crossover: Harry Potter characters transposed to the world of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (H2G2). Parody of the H2G2 story with HP people. The humour does not rely on familiarity with H2G2, knowledge of HP is more important.
1. Introduction and List of Characters

**Heart of Darkness **

**Introduction**

This is a parody of _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ (H2G2). This was originally a radio drama, then books (a "five part trilogy"), and later a TV series, all by the late Douglas Adams. All H2G2 characters and many of the jokes belong to him and the BBC.

However, it is possible to read this without being familiar with H2G2, as the humour does not rely on this knowledge. Familiarity with Harry Potter (HP) is more important.

HP characters, the property of JK Rowling, have been substituted for the H2G2 ones, as below. Their characters and relationships are not true to the HP originals, although all retain certain characteristics, and have been selected with these in mind.

If this type of "messing about" with the characters upsets or annoys you, please do not read on.

**Cast of Characters**

**Character Substitution:**

This information is provided for anyone familiar with H2G2. It also partially explains the derivation of the character names.

H2G2's **Arthur Dent** (last surviving Earth man, rather a dullard) played by HP's** Ron Weasley**, in this story called **Ron Prang**

H2G2's **Ford Prefect** (researcher for H2G2, Arthur's best friend, from near Betelgeuse, distantly related to Zaphod Beeblebrox) played by HP's **Sirius Black**,in this story called **Sirius Anglia**

H2G2's **Vogon captain** (member of one of the universe's nastiest races) played by HP's **Lord Voldemort**, in this story called **Captain Voldemort** (the **Voldem** captain)

H2G2's **Vogon guard** played by HP's **Argus Filch**, in this story called **Filch** (the **Voldem** guard)

H2G2's **Zaphod Beeblebrox** (arrogant one-time Galactic President, thinks he's god's gift to women) played by HP's **Lucius Malfoy**, in this story called **Lucius Beeblebrox**

H2G2's **Trillian **(**Tricia MacMillan**) (last surviving Earth woman, frighteningly intelligent) played by HP's **Hermione Granger**, in this story called **Henger**

H2G2's **Marvin **(the paranoid android) played by HP's **Prof. Severus Snape**, in this story called **Snape**


	2. Chapter 1: Touching the Void

Heart of Darkness

Chapter 1: Touching the Void

The following events happened on the day that the Earth was destroyed by a Voldem Constructor Fleet to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Coincidentally, this was the same day that Ron Prang found out that his friend Sirius Anglia was not from Guildford after all, but from a planet somewhere in the vicinity of Bellatrix:

"Drink all this firewhisky now!" instructed Sirius.

"Three glasses of firewhisky? At lunchtime?" queried Ron, looking at his best friend as if he were mad.

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so!" pronounced Sirius.

"You should send that to the _Reader's Digest_. They've got a page specially for people like you," complained Ron, watching Sirius in disbelief as he fiddled with what looked like a very small mobile phone.

"Drink it. It's muscle relaxant. Now, come over here!"

* * *

"Sirius, where are we?" asked Ron weakly, picking himself up from the floor, and staggering a little.

"We're safe. How do you feel?"

"Like a military academy. Bits of me keep passing out."

"The alcohol should have cushioned most of the effects of the matter transference beam. You'll have lost some salt though. Eat these peanuts."

"Where **are** we?" insisted Ron, obediently chewing salted peanuts.

"Aboard a Voldem ship."

"Excuse me, I thought the Voldems just destroyed the Earth?"

"They did."

"But you said we were safe! Anyway, how did we get here?"

"The House Elves let us on board."

"House Elves? I thought you said this was a Voldem ship?"

"It is. They're the in-flight caterers. They hate the Voldems, so they let us on board."

"But how did we get here? We didn't just stick out a thumb, and say, 'Take me as far as the Hogwarts Roundabout'!"

"Well, the thumb is a sub-ether device, and the roundabout is Flamel's Star. Look in this!" Sirius handed what looked like a large pocket calculator to Ron. "_The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_. It's an electronic book"

Ron looked at the book, and was greeted by the sight of the large, friendly words _DON'T PANIC!_ on the cover. He looked up at Sirius. "That's the first sensible thing anyone's said to me all day!" he said.

"Key in 'Voldem'," said Sirius. Ron typed in the word, and waited. Almost immediately, as hideous images of various Voldems flitted across the small screen, the book spoke in a smooth, dark brown English voice:

"Voldems: _Here's what to do if you want to get a lift from a Voldem: Forget it. They are one of the most evil races in the galaxy. They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the ravenous Vampyres of Transylvania. The best way to get a drink out of a Voldem is stick your finger down his throat, and the best way to irritate him is to feed his grandmother to the ravenous Vampyres of Transylvania."_

"Why doesn't it say anything about the House Elves?" asked Ron.

"It's not very accurate. I'm a researcher for the guide. I'm working on the next edition."

Suddenly, a noise came over the tannoy. "Listen, it's the Voldem captain," said Sirius.

"But I don't speak Voldem!"

"Put this fish in your ear," said Sirius, dispensing a small leech-like fish from a large tank, and holding out the wriggling creature to Ron.

"Urgh!"

"It's only a little one!" Sirius himself put the fish in Ron's ear. Immediately, Ron heard the Voldem speak in English: "… and the ship's sensors tell me we have a couple of hitchhikers aboard. Just to let you know, you are not welcome. This is not a taxi service. As soon as the guards find you, you will be thrown into space. If you're lucky, you may admire my beauty first!"

Ron said, "Sirius, what's this fish doing in my ear?"

"It's translating for you. Look up Babel Fish in the book." Ron keyed in the words, and the book replied:

_"The Babel Fish is small, yellow and leechlike. When inserted into the ear, it allows the wearer to instantly understand anything said in any form of language. The fish feeds on brain waves, and excretes a telepathic matrix that the brain decodes using the speech heard, leading to instant language translation. Since its discovery, the Babel Fish, while removing any barriers to understanding, has been identified as the cause of more and bloodier wars."_ Meanwhile, the screen showed pictures of the assorted inhabitants of many worlds engaged in mindless violence.

"What a strange book!" said Ron. However, he did not have long to ponder on his newfound knowledge, as thundering footsteps were heard approaching them. Sirius and Ron ran away as fast as they could, twisting and turning down endless dingy grey corridors. Eventually, out of breath, they reached the dead end of an exceptionally long corridor. It was not long before a scowling figure holding a wand and a burning torch bore down on them, accompanied by a very spiteful looking cat.

"You must come with me, or you will be late," he said.

"Late? Late for what?" asked Ron, puzzled.

"Late, as in the late Mr Hitchhiker," replied the Voldem guard, with great satisfaction. He liked issuing threats. (The fact that they were no more than that was a fact unknown to his victims: for the guard, whose name was Filch, was a Squib, and could not operate a wand to save his life.)

Sirius and Ron were marched by Filch and the cat to the bridge, where the Voldem captain surveyed them from a chair hovering magically just above the ground. Ron found it hard to look at him: his face was bitter and twisted, and in spite of the fact that the Voldem guard was definitely a humanoid, it was hard to recognise any human qualities at all in this basest of creatures. The captain smiled, producing the same reaction that a snarl would normally produce: fear, loathing, and a strong urge to run away. However, Filch held his wand over them threateningly, and the cat smirked at their obvious discomfiture.

"I am Captain Voldemort of the ship _Mindless Destruction_," said the Voldem captain, in a high, cruel voice, "Now, Mudbloods, either die in the vastness of space or…

"Tell me how handsome you think I am!"

"Hey - we're not Mudbloods," protested Sirius, "we're Pure Bloods!"

The eyes turned to him. It was almost as bad as trying to outstare a basilisk. "Those who associate with Muggles are no better than Mudbloods," declared the captain disdainfully.

Meanwhile, Ron cleared his throat, and began manfully: "Well, I think you're a very handsome Voldem myself." Sirius stared at him in disbelief, then the penny dropped, and he joined in, "Yes, certainly. Such a noble forehead…"

"And very yellow eyes - like, er - a pair of gold coins?"

"And such nice hair. Such an unusual shade of - er - well, mud is a very fashionable colour this year…"

"Yes, and pale skin shows that you don't go out in that dangerous sun…"

"And you must be able to hear music so well with those unusually shaped ears…"

"And enjoy smelling the flowers with such a fine nose…"

"**Enough!**" yelled Captain Voldemort. "Death's too good for them! Throw them off the ship!"

The Voldem guard gleefully marched them to the nearest airlock. Sirius tried desperately to engage him in conversation. "Do you enjoy your work?" Filch looked very surprised. "Well, the hours are good," he said, "but now you come to mention it, most of the actual minutes aren't."

"Why do you do it then? Is it the black uniform? I bet the girls like that!"

"Well, my aunt said it was a nice steady job for a young wizard. Some of the shouting I quite like. '**Resistance is futile**'," he demonstrated.

"What are you doing, Sirius?" hissed Ron.

Sirius continued addressing Filch. "Oh, you're very good at that, I can tell. But wouldn't you like to do something else. Starting now?"

Filch regarded him for as moment, then shook his head resolutely. "No, if it's all the same to you, I'll just carry on being a guard. The pension's very good you see. Nice of you to take an interest, though."

So saying, Filch pushed Ron and Sirius into the airlock, and closed the inner door on them. Their last vision of Filch was him striding away, with his cat perched on his shoulder, smiling malevolently at them as if she had just found a large bowl of cream.

"This is it then. We're going to die!" cried Ron.

Sirius nodded dumbly, wondering why Earth people always felt it necessary to state the obvious.

The outer door of the airlock slid open.

Two bodies drifted into the blackness of space.


	3. Chapter 2: Infinite Improbability

Heart of Darkness

Chapter 2: Infinite Improbability

As if muffled through a fog, Ron heard a familiar female voice counting: "Two hundred and sixty-four thousand to one against and falling…" He shook his head, and watched one of his legs float away. As if swimming through treacle, he turned to look for Sirius, and noted that he appeared to have changed into a large black dog. A sound made him turn his head again to see what was making the chattering noise that came from behind him. "Excuse me," said the Spokesmonkey, "My friends and I would like to talk to you about this Shakespeare script we've just worked out." Ron saw a line of monkeys stretching to infinity. He closed his eyes, and wondered if he were dead.

The voice continued its mesmeric counting, "One hundred and twenty-five thousand to one against and falling…" Ron thought to himself, I know that voice, who is she?

"Fifty thousand to one against and falling…" Ron woke again, and the voice was still counting. What did those numbers mean? Was heaven full of mathematicians?

The voice continued (who _was _she?), "Do not be alarmed. Anything strange you see will shortly return to normal. Welcome to the spaceship _Heart of Darkness_ which is powered by the unique Infinite Improbability Drive. Five thousand to one against and falling…"

The numbers fell, until finally the voice said, "One to one. Normality is restored, although we are not sure what normality is anyway."

Ron opened his eyes properly. His arms and legs seemed to be exactly where they were supposed to be. Sirius was himself again. The Shakespeare-writing monkeys had disappeared. Ron stood up and looked around. "Wow, this is more like it! This is what I call a spaceship! All shiny metal and clean surfaces. Better than that old wreck the Voldems had!"

Sirius too was looking around. "Yes," he agreed, "I think it's brand new. Heeey…" Sirius was looking at a viewscreen that showed an image of the ship's bridge. He muttered to himself, "Lucius! You old Black Arts space wizard! You stole this ship, didn't you?"

Up on the bridge, Lucius Beeblebrox half sat, half lay in the enormous captain's chair, two sets of long blond tresses cascading over its back. It was difficult to see where his black leather outfit ended and the black leather chair began.

"Hey, ten out of ten for style, Babe, but zero out of ten for intelligence. Picking up hitchhikers was not a great idea. Who are these guys? They could be Galactic Aurors!"

"They would have died if we hadn't picked them up, Lucius."

"So? Death is an awfully big adventure, they say."

"Anyway, I didn't pick them up. The ship did it itself. Look, there's something odd happening. The probability when we picked them up was one billion, four hundred and eighty-three thousand million, five hundred and seventy thousand, one hundred and fifty to one against. Don't you see the significance of that?"

With one head, Lucius stared at this woman he had picked up. He cradled the other in his hands. She scared him sometimes. Usually, he lorded it over everyone. He had been voted the Sexiest and Hippest Sentient Being in the Universe for three years running. However, she was so devastatingly intelligent that he couldn't cope with her leaps of intuition. (Actually Lucius was rather stupid, but far too vain to realise it.) So he just nodded, and said, "Er, yeah…"

"Look!" Henger displayed the probability figures on the viewscreen, and changed the format. "It's my phone number! And didn't you notice which sector of space they were picked up in?"

"Er…"

"It's the same sector where you picked me up!"

"Yeah? Who are these guys anyway?" Lucius changed the viewscreen to show the cargo bay, and the two hitchhikers came into view. "Hey! Sirius! Who'd have thought it? Snape?"

Snape the paranoid android replied in fruity, lugubrious tones, "Yes?"

"Go and fetch the hitchhikers and bring them up to the bridge."

"Just that?"

"Yes."

"Oh, I see. Brain work again."

"Just do it, okay?"

"I'm going, I'm going." Snape strode off, his black cloak billowing behind him, muttering under his breath, "I don't know. Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and all they say is, 'Fetch me a coffee, Snape', 'Get the hitchhikers, Snape', 'Pick up that piece of paper, Snape'…"

Meanwhile, Lucius looked around him. "Now, which is the most nonchalant chair to be discovered in…?"

Sirius and Ron jumped and turned around as Snape slipped silently into the cargo bay, and said in his hypnotic voice, "You two are to come with me to the bridge."

"Fine," said Sirius. He and Ron followed Snape into the lift. The doors closed, sighed and spoke, "_Enjoy your trip_." Ron pulled a face.

"Ghastly isn't it? The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation has given all their products Genuine People Personalities," said Snape. He glared at Sirius balefully. "Your family has a lot to answer for. Look what they did to me!" Sirius shrugged his shoulders, and spread his hands out, palms upwards. "Distant relatives," he said, slightly apologetically.

"Did they make you?" asked Ron in disbelief, eyeing the brooding form with its straggly black hair and pale, pinched face. He looked away quickly: Snape's black eyes were almost as hypnotic as the voice.

"I was a prototype," sniffed Snape. "They didn't make any more like me."

"I'm not surprised. What are you supposed to do with a depressed robot?" said Ron.

"What are you supposed to do if you _are_ a depressed robot? That's what I want to know," replied Snape gloomily. Sirius and Ron exchanged glances. Both were mightily relieved when the lift stopped. As they stepped out, the lift doors said, _"Glad to be of service."_ Snape stared at them, sneering.

Sirius and Ron walked onto the bridge. Lucius was lying so nonchalantly in his chair that he was almost horizontal. He raised one of his arms. "Hi, Sirius," he said casually. "Oh, hi Lucius," replied Sirius equally carelessly, looking round the bridge, "The extra arm suits you. Hey, this is a pretty neat ship you've stolen!"

"Who's the Mudblood?" asked Lucius, looking at Ron in a bored way.

"Oh, he's not a Mudblood, he's Pure Blood too. Lucius, this is Ron Prang from Guildford on Earth. Ron, this is my semi-cousin Lucius Beeblebrox, ex Galactic President."

Ron was standing rigid, staring at Lucius with narrowed eyes. "We've met," he said.

"**Met?**" demanded Sirius. "This is Lucius Beeblebrox from Bellatrix Five, you know! Not Fred Jones from Birmingham!"

"We've met," insisted Ron, glaring at Lucius, "Only he called himself Tom Riddle then, and he only had one head, and two arms. Don't you remember that party in Islington? There was a wonderful girl there I was planning on asking out - devastatingly intelligent, very pretty - when up you came, and said to her, 'Hey, Babe, don't waste your time with this dude, come away with me, I'm from another planet!' "

"Well, you have to admit, he was from another planet," said a female voice behind Ron. He spun round. "Hermione Granger!" he gasped.

"I'm Henger now," she said, going to stand proudly beside Lucius. "What choice did I have? With a degree in Dark Magic and another in Astrophilosophy, it was either that, or the Job Centre on Monday."

"So you've been on that miserable planet too?" Sirius asked Lucius.

"Yeah, I hitched a lift with a Teaser."

"What's a Teaser?" asked Ron.

"They're rich kids who land on some planet that hasn't discovered interplanetary travel yet. They choose some remote spot, put a pair of antennae on their heads, and walk up and down making 'beep-beep' noises in front of some person that nobody's going to believe. Rather childish really," said Sirius.

Lucius put one arm around Henger. "I grew that one just for you, Babe," he winked.

Henger said, "Now, how about a drink for our new companions. Snape, would you do the honours?"

"Certainly, Madam," replied Snape sarcastically, "Then would you like me to switch myself off, or just rust where I'm standing?"

"Snape, we really appreciate your work," said Henger, desperately trying to placate him.

"Don't pretend to care. I know you don't. Don't worry, I'll get your drinks." Snape stalked off, muttering under his breath. He returned with a tray bearing a bottle of gin, a large bottle of tonic, an ice bucket, a plate of lemon slices, and five glasses. He prepared the drinks, and presented the tray to Lucius. Lucius, keeping one arm around Henger, helped himself to two glasses simultaneously with his other two arms. He raised the glasses.

"Sirius, hi and welcome! Earthman, hi and welcome! Gin-and-tonics, hi and welcome!" So saying, he downed the two gin-and-tonics with one swallow from each mouth.

Then one face frowned. "Henger, is this kind of thing going to happen every time we use the Infinite Improbability Drive?"

"Very probably," replied Henger crisply, surreptitiously trying to stop Lucius' hand snaking upwards from her waist, as she gratefully downed her gin-and-tonic.

Ron sipped his drink thoughtfully. "Is there any tea on this ship?" he asked forlornly.


End file.
